Assistant professor Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, who started working on the project as a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , has now taken the lead as the principal investigator, funded through a $848,013 grant from NASA for the next three years.
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PhD student Oriel Humes recently flew on Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which is NASA’s 747 airplane with a hole in the side of it through which a telescope points.
SOFIA soars over the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains with its telescope door open during a test flight. SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft.
Credits: NASA/Jim Ross
Oriel writes, “I wanted to share… Read more
“This meteorite recorded the first stage of the evolution of Mars and, by extension, of all terrestrial planets, including the Earth,” said Valerie Payré, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science. “As the Earth lost its old surface mainly due to plate tectonics, observing such settings in extremely ancient terrains on Mars is a rare window into the ancient Earth surface that we lost a long time ago.”
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Professor David Trilling, chair of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to launch a new partnership with Coconino Community College (CCC). The initiative will create a pathway for recruiting 20 CCC2NAU students into paid internships working in research labs at NAU.
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An international team of scientists has determined that massive stars do not make as much oxygen as previously thought. The finding is highly unexpected and has implications not only for stellar evolution but also for explaining how heavy black holes form.
The team, led by Northern Arizona University graduate student and Lowell Observatory Researcher Erin Aadland, studied the physical properties of Wolf-Rayet stars in the nearby galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud, located about 165,000 light-years… Read more
Christopher Edwards shared a press release from JPL about recent findings of widespread CO2 frost on Mars and its role in regolith generation.
Read the JPL Press release here!